HOBIENNIALE 2017

NOVEMBER 3RD - 12TH 2017 | HOBIENNALE

Multiple Locations, Hobart

HOBIENNALE (or HB17 for short) is an arts festival which will take place around the greater Hobart region from the 3rd – 12th November 2017. It will bring together a large group of independent initiatives from across Australia and New Zealand, with each curating an exhibition as part of the program.

The festival will use a range of existing galleries and unusual spaces across the city. There will be exhibition openings, performances, artist talks, workshops, music and many parties.

FELTcult investigates the ‘ARI as cult’, presenting an exhibition of visual and performative works by current and former FELTspace Co-Directors. Through the rituals of performance, exhibition and celebration, FELTcult asks: Who is an ARI for? The juggling act occurs: an artist-led organisation supports and facilitates opportunities for artists. ARI workers will balance this with their own practices, creating a positive feedback loop with their community. The cult, however, may have its own interests prioritised, in a way that is framed as useful and appealing towards those who they try to indoctrinate. Playfully examining these tropes and effectively ‘preaching to the masses’, FELTcult as a performance and exhibition examines and exaggerates these rituals.

Joanna Fateman: It really struck us that, when men make mistakes, it’s fetishized as a glitch . . .Kathleen Hanna: Something beautiful.JF: And when women do it, it’s like . . .KH: . . . a hideous mistake.JF: Right, it’s not considered an artistic innovation or a statement or an intentional thing.

The performances by Lauren Abineri (JEM) explore; modular synthesisthe power of the alter-ego being used as a feminist technology to gain powerthe vulnerability of a ‘costume’ as a thin guisethe cringe of the exaggeratedand the ‘glitches’ of the feminised cyborg character, JEM.

JEM has recently been writing songs about Artist Run Initiatives (in the style of sort of sweet but also quite annoying sentimental pop). She will follow the FELTcult to Hobo; worn out from it’s demands, worn out from all those troublesome ‘feelings’ and worn out from the party...

FELTbubbleNancy Downes

FELTbubble sits between playful ritual and a meditative circumstance. Here the body as a site is explored in it’s capacity to attune and respond to the environment in which it is emplaced. Accessing visual cues around darkness and unknown spaces FELTbubble awaits human participation. Once ventured, FELTbubble provides a sensual spatial encounter beside other humans: a contested space with strangely nurturing overtones. Emerging from the ‘bubble’, a subtle shift in awareness may provide an insight to the FELTcult.

Artist Run Initiative (Word Play IV)Matt Huppatz

In a series of recent word plays, Huppatz explores our obsession with labelling and experiments with undermining the power of the word to differentiate and control. This stems from an interest in the borders of language, and situations in which it breaks down, including states of extreme emotion, sensation, or ecstasy.

Ritual for a failed self (Golden Domes)Ray Harris

I grew up in a cult, well more of a flawed new age mediating community complete with golden domes for levitation and a removed rich guru who charged heavily to enlightened the masses, that always said it wasn’t a cult, but was thick with rules, rituals and cult-like tendencies. What I observed in this environment started me on my conceptual fascination with our internal fantasy versus reality.

The relentless pursuit of a selfless idealised self would just create or conceal self-centered insensitive neglect. For this work I wanted to channel the hope, absurdity, anxiety and futility of new age type rituals of cleansing, acceptance and change.

A Ritual InitiationKate Kurucz

One of us...one of us....one of us

As a new recruit into the ARI community, I have been meditating on the nature of initiation and the pleasures of collectivism.

A Ritual Initiation invites the viewer to give themselves over to the collective and experience the give and take, sacrifice and reward nature of the ARI model.

Viewers / new co-directors are invited to approach the altar of volunteer-arts and use the scissors to shear off a symbolic offering of hair to place in the vessel. They may then cut a piece of the felt to keep as a personal talisman and complete their induction into FELTcult.

CoreBernadette Klavins

Core imagines FELTspace as a developing geological entity, one that has continued to build both physical and social layers over the last decade. Positioned as a core sample of the Compton Street gallery, the work playfully speculates upon the layers of materials that might one day stratify into an earthly record of the space. Layers of concrete, plaster, paint, ply, floor sheets, plinth, and wall filler become part of the relic, as ‘Core’ holds material data of FELTspace’s deep history.

This activity is proudly supported by the Adelaide Central School of Art Graduate Support Program

IN-SPI-RAY-SHUN-SHUN APP-LI-KAY-SHUN-SHUNMonte Masi

Monte Masi works with text/screens/performance whose work explores the conditions under which creative labour is performed and distributed in todayʼs world. Often these performances reflect on economies of visual attention: the labour of looking and the job of developing a perspective. This practice of “looking at looking” has frequently sought to appropriate those forms used to describe and evaluate works of art, both those which occur in galleries (artist talks, audio tours, image lists) as well as art education (crits, studio visits, reviews); interrogating the language of aesthetic evaluation and description within our image-saturated, data-driven contemporary on/offline environment. He frequently produces works through casual, informal collaborations with other artists and curators, exploring both the politics of (as well as the means for) mutual support: the “carrying on of carrying on”.

Doing Stuff with Anne.J: Episode 6 – How to Volunteer at FELTspaceJenna Pippett

Doing Stuff with Anne.J: Episode 6 – How to Volunteer at FELTspace takes the form of a spoof community television program - though obviously somewhat successful, as we find ourselves at episode six. Referencing low-fi filmic categories including infomercials, mockumentaries and dated instructional videos, Anne.J our host is a spritely character, radiating enthusiasm.

Set on location at FELTspace in Adelaide, Anne.J touches on the history of FELTspace whilst providing informative demonstrations on how to perform gallery invigilator tasks. Humour is poked at the many nuances of artist run initiates including facilities, exhibiting and the culture of volunteering.

Invite your friendsCarly Snoswell

Creating a tapestry from previous exhibition invitations from FELTspace, Invite Your Friends attempts to document the history of FELT, while also representing this seemingly useless collateral that ARI’s accumulate throughout their lifespan. Adorned with fringing, lace, sequins and beads, each invitation is a shrine to that moment at FELT, coming together to map the complicated narrative of our ARI. Through laborious and repetitive processes of sewing and adorning, Snoswell draws on her own research into the use of devotional craft making as an outlet for ritual behavior, exploring this mundane act of cataloging and record keeping.

// Production Designer //Meg Wilson

Meg Wilson is an Adelaide-based interdisciplinary artist who works predominantly with large-scale and often site-specific installation and performance. She aims to provoke imposed perplexity, uneasiness and a sense of drama in the everyday, through explorations of performativity of space and audience encounter with the ordinary, within the context of the out-of-the-ordinary. Meg has exhibited independently with BLINDSIDE, VIC; Constance ARI, TAS; and Format, Fontanelle, Nexus Arts and FELTspace (SA). Recent works include You Will Only Ever Be Any Good if You Can Run the Marathon, an endurance feat performed at the Contemporary Art Centre of SA (2015), Team Trampoline (FELTspace, 2016), and Sometimes I…, a performance in development for teenage girls. As a designer for theatre she has worked with Vitalstatistix, Foul Play, Carclew, No Strings Attached, Act Now and Restless Dance, working with artists such as Mish Grigor, Willoh S.Weiland, Halcyon Macleod, Gaelle Mellis, Geoff Cobham and Michelle Ryan. Throughout 2016 Meg was Lead Artist intern with experimental theatremakers, THE RABBLE.

// Writer //Serena Wong

Serena is an emerging curator, arts writer and general all-rounder. In 2011 she moved to Adelaide to complete a double Masters in Art History and Curating at The University of Adelaide. Serena has recently commenced as Arts and Cultural Development officer for Mount Gambier, and was a Co-Director at FELTspace up to June 2017 managing the Writers program. She worked with Prospect Council to produce Prospect-Us a temporary public art project, South Australian Living Artist Festival as project coordinator for SALA on Show, Art Gallery of South Australia as the assistant for the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart and Curator in Residence at Carclew Youth Arts, among other great projects. Serena is particularly interested in audience engagement and her projects focus on facilitating new ways for people to interact with, and enjoy art and what that looks like in the 21st Century.

// Project Coordinators //Fiona Borthwick

Fiona Borthwick is an arts worker and active volunteer within the Adelaide arts community. After graduating in 2012 with a Masters in Visual Arts from the South Australian School of Art, Fiona exhibited work at UniSA, Brunswick Street Gallery and in 2013 she was a finalist for both the Austral Emerging Artists Award for SALA Festival and the Art, Architecture and Design Graduate Exhibition Prize. She went on to complete a Masters in Art History and a Masters in Curatorial and Museum Studies at the University of Adelaide. In December 2014 she undertook an internship at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing where an interest in how people interact and engage with art and how art translates between cultures evolved. Since then, Fiona has worked with various museums and arts organisations including the South Australian Museum, the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia and ACE Open. She is currently Finance and Grants Co-Director at FELTspace ARI and works as an Administration Assistant for SALA Festival.

Becci Love

Becci Love is an arts producer and emerging curator. Becci is FELTspace’s Co-Director for Special Projects. She has spent the last decade working on festivals around Adelaide, Australia, and internationally including Adelaide Writers Week, Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne International Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe and WOMADelaide. From 2010 to 2013 she was the founding director of the reading room, a small gallery and community space focused on providing an open cultural venue for emerging artists and creators. She is currently Program Coordinator at Vitalstatistix in Port Adelaide – a contemporary arts organisation with a focus on the development of multidisciplinary artworks, which experiment with ideas, forms and engagement. Becci is particularly interested in interdisciplinary and experimental art forms, and engaging with marginalised communities.